Notebook September 2005

An air raid siren for the Left

On Lilliput, the clever litle magazine that helped to see England through the Second World War.

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In London in 1937, Stefan Lorant, a Hungarian photojournalist who had served time in a Nazi prison, started a pocket-sized monthly magazine which combined English humor with European style. It was called Lilliput. Throughout the Second World War it entertained readers in bomb shelter, canteen, and mess with its unique mix of stories, articles, photography, and cartoons.

On the magazines third birthday, in the August 1940 issue, as London came under sustained night attack, the editors wrote:

When we started Lilliput, in July 1937, we planned for the first time an intelligent magazine for intelligent people, at a popular price. It has been our guiding policy ever since.

But in July 1937 we could not have foreseen that less than three years later we would be producing Lilliput in the middle of a world war, although, even then, Lilliput was in its own way...